Research and prototype resort app to onboard and provide information and facilitate communication
Company: Mingo
Project Summary
I teamed up with another designer to research and create a prototype to digitize Greek resorts’ experience.
Timeline & Team
6 months, working closely with PM and Engineering Lead
Responsibilities
User research
Experience design
Prototype and user testing
Visual design
Company Overview
In order to attract more customers, many hotels in Greece hope to provide digital products to improve hotel guests' accommodation experience.
Mingo aims to provide a digitized resort experience and smoothen communication between the traveler and the resort they stay in.
Project Overview
Mingo had consulted with various hotels and came up with a product idea, and our design team was to validate the problem and start the design process.
Project goals
Enhance resort guests’ experience.
Allow resort guests to find all hotel services quickly and clearly.
Allow efficient and direct communication between the resort and the guests.
business goals
Improve and digitize resort guests’ experience.
Streamline hotel owners’ operations.
Potentially offer a more personalized experience to guests.
Planned process
Problem Discovery
Before we started, our team had already talked to a few hotels and resorts in Greece. They found that individual (non-chain) hotels in Greece are having a hard time adapting to new technology.
This is mainly because:
the implementation cost is too high
no dedicated CMS to the hospitality industry
Many hotels mentioned that they would like a customer-facing app that they can easily implement, customize, and update.
Market research
To get an idea of what was being done, we looked at a few alternatives that were available in the market.
User research
We set up our target audience, and came up with our learning goals.
Demographic and geographic
21 - 45 years old
Financially stable
Travels with friends, couples, or families
Psychographic and behavioral
Vacation traveler: They are happy to enjoy all kinds of services when staying in the hotel, and pay attention to efficient communication.
Exploring traveler: They hope to find the most localized travel experience, and hope to receive professional guidance and personalized hotel services.
Traveling preferences
How often do you travel?
With whom do you travel?
Where do you stay on your travels?
Traveling experiences
Tell me about your best travel experience.
Tell me about your worst travel experience.
What do you enjoy most about traveling?
What annoys you the most when you travel?
Hotel/Resort experiences
Tell me about your best hotel/resort experience.
How often do you call reception? What is it normally for?
What services do you use when you stay at a hotel?
Have you used any hotel apps before?
What did you like or not like about them?
Interviewees
Countries
Experiences
Research analysis
Learnings and findings
Empathy map
Problem statement
I am Gigi Guest, I am trying to enjoy and make the most of my travels. I can’t because the hotel keeps losing track of my requests and I don’t know where to find the information I want.
Preliminary Sketches
Concept 1:
Map-based navigation
Being in a new place, it’s hard to find your way around the resort. By using a map-based navigation, you can explore what the resort has to offer at the different buildings.
Feedback:
Feels like a game.
Scaling to different resorts will be difficult.
Concept 2:
Icon-based navigation
A more conventional navigation system, focusing more on functionality so that users can get what they want done quickly.
Feedback:
Easy to follow and know what to do.
“All Services” tab helps them see everything so they can quickly pick what they need.
Concept 3:
Categorized Request Tabs
A sliding bar of tabs on top allows for users to easily find what they’re looking for without having to navigate through different pages.
Feedback:
Easy to follow and know what to do.
“All Services” tab helps them see everything so they can quickly pick what they need.
Concept 4:
“Chat bot”-like Requests
Users can put in a request as if they’re talking directly to friendly hotel personnel.
Feedback:
Don’t like the idea of chatting with a robot.
Would prefer to type out requests instead of clicking through buttons.
Wireframing
To get a better understanding of what users thought, we presented wireframes to another group of users that matched our persona.
User testing and iterations
Through wireframing and testing, we realized that the wording we used caused confusion for our interviewees.
Learnings: What confirmation number is this?
During the onboarding process, we need to connect the user to their hotel reservations. But as someone new to the app, users were confused on what confirmation number this was asking for. We changed the wording to Booking Confirmation Number instead to clarify this.
Learnings: What is on the "Stays" tab?
A lot of our users weren't sure what would appear on the Stays tab, and had trouble differentiating it from the Requests tab. To make it clearer, we changed the name to Reservations so people know to go there to look at their current or future reservations.
Learnings: Call to Action
We wanted the tone to be very friendly, so we used a first person voice for our CTA button on the home page. But users were confused on who’s asking this, and what they can do with it.
We added the resort name in the box to make it obvious that they can reach out to the resort through the CTA button.
Visual design
Key UI Design for main task flows
Visual design system that feels luxurious but not tacky
Simple and clear iconography
Technical development
Delivered assets and supported engineers during development
The Engineering Team have been working on building the prototype since the wireframing stage. We prepared the Figma design file with them, and helped with exporting assets, like the loading screens.
Next steps:
Hotel-facing web app
Outcomes and learnings
Potential hotels and resorts have looked at our wireframes, and have expressed interest in adopting Mingo.
Key outcomes
Guests are able to communicate with the resorts, and are able to find all necessary information on the app.
Resorts are able to keep guests happy, which increases the chances of them leaving positive reviews.
What I learned
Involving PM and Tech Leads in the design process helps keep everyone on the same page.
Easier to get feedback in real-time, than posting on slack and waiting for others to comment.